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into a source for literature. Thus, one can say that the narrative tense used by Ion Creangă in his memories is Past Tense. However, his listeners live under the impression of a continuous epic present. It is the aesthetic tense which appears between the story-teller and the listener, a tense that converts everything into an up-to-dateness, which in its turn becomes a unique reality. The first verb of the fragment – stau – stresses this idea. Ion Creangă is still touched by the memory of his native village, Humuleşi. Most of the times, the narration (which refers to the personal events from the life and experience of the speaking subject) starts with the Present Tense to continue then with the Past Tense, sometimes in the same sentence, without us being aware of the change.

As I have already mentioned, the paragraph dedicated to the description of the native village begins with the verb stau (stop). If in English, the presence of a subject is compulsory, this does not hold true in the Romanian sentence. That is way, the presence of the pronoun I (as the logical subject) is not necessary since the inflection of the verb indicates the person the action refers to.

Creangă is, first of all, a narrator. His Memories are poor in descriptions and the characters’ portraits are rare. Nature itself does not fit into such a creation since space is entirely blocked by the bustles and the gestures of the heroes and time itself precipitates rapidly and without many pauses. One of the stylistic effects of these features will be the unusual frequency of the temporal determinatives such as the adverb of time câteodată (sometimes). This adverb emphasizes the repetitive character of the action performed by the verb stau. Even if he is now a grown-up, Ion Creangă cannot help himself recollecting the days of his childhood over and over again. Being a popular writer his work abounds in verbal phrases. They offer a certain fluency, easiness in the manner in which the author describes places, characters or events. Thus, mention should be made with regard to the phrasal verb – şi-mi aduc aminte (recollect). This is a false reflexive voice because the action expressed by it employs the subject in a way similar to that in the reflexive voice. In fact, such constructions always have a direct object – different from the subject: şi-mi aduc aminte ce vremi şi ce oameni (I…to recollect the times and the people).

Next, we come across the relative pronoun ce. Usually, one uses this pronoun to connect a subordinate clause to its main clause. This does not hold true in this case. Words are conditioned, from many points of view, by the context in which they are placed. A minimal form of the context but of primary importance is the determinatives – the part of speech which defines the word. Such context changes the word from a simple notion into a grammaticalized lexical unit. Both vremi and oameni are polyfunctional and polysemantic

words (vremi – temporal dimension, weather, historic period; oameni - nation, family, society, etc.). The noun determinative marks not only the “grammatical meanings” but also the lexical ones. In this case, the determinative is not an article (the definite article) but the relative pronoun ce. Since the two subjects are not used together with a definite article their qualifying values are brought into prominence. The object is memorized not in its individual, concrete existence but in one of its essential attributes – as a symbol of his childhood. The pronoun ce holds a special place. By resorting to it, Ion Creangă stresses a personal involvement; he remembers those days and people with nostalgia, with a feeling of regret. He is still tied to those times which he cannot forget.

The next verb erau (used to be) brings those times and people up to the present as if they are in front of our eyes. This could be done by placing the verb into Past Tense (the Romanian Imperfect). I have already mentioned that it is the tense favoured by the author since it gives the action length, increasing its presence in our consciousness. The stylistic value of the Past Tense shows it as the tense proper for the literature of memoirs. The adverbial modifier of place that follows has the role of intensifying and exploiting the dramatic tension, the feelings that overcome the author. From the point of view of syntax, the adverbial modifier is favoured by being placed after the preposition în – în părţile noastre (in my part of the world). This preposition appears as a means of stressing the visual sensation. The author uses it to restrict the plane: he is not describing the Romanian people or land, but the people from his native region – Moldavia. In this case, the word that carries the adequate semantic load is the personal pronoun noastre. By using the plural form, Ion Creangă is no longer a unique individual, but the representative of a whole nation.

Going on with his narration, Creangă establishes several temporal marks. At the level of the phrase, the subordinate clause of time introduced by când expresses actions simultaneous or previous to the ones expressed in the main clause. Now that the descriptive plane was briefly drawn, the author turns his attention to the temporal one. He uses this adverb to point out the beginning of the action. This is a voluntary action on the part of the author. He limits the description of time and people to an exact period – childhood. He presents the image of his native village through the eyes of a child that experiences everything for the first time. The verb that follows the adverb, începusem (I had just begun), also stresses the beginning, the point of origin. Little by little, almost unnoticed, the author draws our attention to the past, to his childhood. This idea is brought to light by the tenses of the verbs that have been used so far. They stress a descendent journey: the author starts with the Present, continues with a Past

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a person who knows the importance of housework, of owning land.

The sequence of positive determinatives is enriched with the syntagm în toată puterea cuvântului (with a long assured reputation). Both the nouns puterea and its determinative – toată – qualify a certain feature to its highest degree. The archaic term – întemeiat, includes in its basic meaning a relation of determination. Bearing positive connotations it precedes and increases at the same time, the number of the descriptive adjectives that qualify both the village and the villagers.

The extraordinary vitality of the heroes, the enthusiasm and the passion with which they act grants each element hyperbolic dimensions. Whether they play or work – cu flăcăi voinici şi fete mândre, care ştiau a învâti şi hora şi suveica, de vuia satul de vatale (with robust young men and beautiful girls who knew how to dance but also how to swing the shuttle so that the village would buzz with the sound of the looms on every side) – Ion Creangă’s heroes waste a lot of energy identifying themselves with their deeds. On the linguistic level, the consequence of this rather unusual vitality will be the frequency of the ideas in the superlative. This procedure is realized through a range of varied and original ways. We can thus talk about a “superlative of the action”. The noun gospodari (farmers) can also be included in this range. This term means someone who is very industrious, someone who runs a prosperous farm. The meaning of the noun is intensified by the determinative unul şi unul (hard-working) which acts as an adjective in the superlative. This pronominal phrase resorts to its analytical concrete form of the singular to stress the uniqueness of the people from Humuleşti.

The next two nouns flăcăi and fete together with their determinatives continue the long list of qualifying adjectives. It is a well-known fact that Ion Creangă’s portraits are done in only a few essential lines without paying too much attention to minor details. The above-mentioned syntagm stands testimony to this: we know that the young men (flăcăi) are voinici (robust) and the girls (fetele) are mândre (beautiful). But even so, the picture – as a whole – is a merely graphical one. The words are the best choices under the present circumstances: the noun flăcăi can be applied on the one hand to a handsome man and on the other hand to a young, well-built person. This idea is further carried on by the adjective voinici.

The building of the school in Humuleşti – a prestigious edifice of Memoirs – is seen in a sonorous environment: de vuia satul de vatale (the village would buzz with the sound of the looms on every side) of an active world, a world open to the future. In order to underline the idea of “intensity” on the one hand and to link the narration, on the other hand, Creangă associates the consecutive conjunction de to the other

ways of expressing the superlative mentioned so far. Many words in this fragment allow the use of the

expressive resources of the speech sounds according to their meaning and the tonality of the text. The verb vuia and the noun vatale are good examples in this respect. Both contain the fricative consonant v which suggests hardness, sonority. They continue to suggest, on the sonorous plane, the image of the play. We also notice the assonance of the open vowel a. It is the most open vowel, maximum opening, which can be emphasized by the length of the duration of pronunciation. Thus, the words are pronounced in a stressed manner gaining nerve and power.

As it can be easily noticed, the two paragraphs abound in enumerations that replace descriptions. Being descriptive passages, there are only a few verbs and they are used mainly in the Past Tense. This tense increases the dynamism of the fragment which – in its essence – is a static one. The picture of the village and its people – as it emerges from the two paragraphs – is remarkable thanks to its dynamic character. The linguistic manifestation is always kept to its highest level of intensity. In order to do this, the author resorts to words with figurative meaning, repetitions, contextual synonymy etc. From a stylistic point of view, we notice the author’s preference for long over-elaborate sentences, usually connected by the conjunction “şi”. As for the figures of speech, they are rather non-existent except for the epithet. All the above-mentioned characteristics make these two paragraphs distinctive piece of writing signed Ion Creangă.

Primary Sources:

Creangă, Ion. Amintiri din copilărie. Poveşti şi povestiri / Memories of Childhood. Tales and Stories. Bucureşti: ed. Ion Creangă, 1984,

Secondary Sources:

Andrei, Mihai and Ghiţă, Iulian. Limba română. Fonetică, Lexicologie, Morfosintaxă / Romanian Language. Phonetics, Lexicology, Morphosyntax, Bucureşti, ed. Corint, 1996.

Bulgar, Gheorghe. Studii de stilistică şi limbă literară / Studies of Stylistics and Literary Language, Bucureşti, ed. Didactică şi Pedagogică, 1971.

Iordan, Iorgu. Studiu introductiv la Ion Creangă / Introductory Study at Ion Creangă, Bucureşti, ed. Minerva, 1970.

Munteanu, Stefan. Studii de lingvistică şi stilistică / Studies of Linguistics and Stylistics, Piteşti, ed. Pigmalion, 1998.

Tohăneanu, G., I. Stilul artistic al lui Ion Creangă / The Artistic Style of Ion Creangă, Bucureşti, ed. Ştiinţifică.